Hahahahaha
I will always push your canoes across the pond. Thanks so much for the shout out. Made my week!

http://eatwithinyourmeans.com Beth Hornback

Hey Kyle! :)

http://squarespaceguru.com Squarespace Guru

Hey guys! Great show btw! My brand is Squarespace Guru and my blog is built using Squarespace! I run a successful business with everything any other platform has to offer. Squarespace was in a different space for a long time, but version 6 is a game changer!

Haha! Yes that vodka question was great. One of my big issues right now is putting processes in place as my business begins to grow, so I’m happy you touched on that! I’d love to hear more on that in the future – maybe some sort of guide for making processes simple and easy to stick to?

http://mattredard.com Matt Redard

Meg, one of the most important things you want to do is document your processes in an easily accessible format. I use Evernote. You can create a notebook for each major process of your business (lead generation, product development, marketing, etc.). Within each notebook, create a note for each process and just dump it all in. What do you do today for that process? Ask yourself who, what, where, when (how often?) and why. That’s what you want to put down. Once you have something documented, you can come back later and edit it down to the bare essentials. But first, document it.

I’ve spent a good portion of my career documenting and improving processes. I love it :-)

http://www.artfulpublications.com/ Meg Sylvia

Thank you so much for the advice, Matt! This is really helpful. I think documenting every little step and coming back to edit later is a great idea.

http://mattredard.com Matt Redard

You’re welcome Meg! I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I’d be happy to help you more if you like. No sweat – seriously. Helping entrepreneurs like you systematize and scale processes so you can focus on your real work is totally my passion! Shoot me a note at matt@mattredard.com and we can chat. You can read about me here: mattredard.com/about

Mike Power

Been a Squarespace user almost since they began. Over ten years now. I love the platform.

– Forced simplify
– No need to code
– Less thinking about templates and style
– Forces us to focus on the content, which is what we need to do to serve the audience! :)

Chase Reeves

I’m no SEO expert, never have been. I’m sure our SEO tactics are wretched… since we don’t have any. But what I understand is this: you make something good, people link to it and share it, it loads fast and looks trusty, google pays attention. This is how we built our business. Though @hili’s response offers some specifics on a potential ecommerce limitation.

Chase Reeves

Yes.

http://jasonbarone.com/ Jason Barone

There is no truth to this, at all. In fact, more often than not the sites I convert from WordPress to Squarespace get BETTER SEO because the SEO tools are so easily accessible. Commonly WordPress SEO is done via some additional plugins, or done in the template itself. The funny thing is I see sites all the time that don’t even have anything filled out!

Anyways, I’m a huge advocate for Squarespace so take my suggestions as you will. But anyone who slams Squarespace for bad SEO either doesn’t know the platform or they are intentionally slamming the platform to sell you on something else.

http://jasonbarone.com/ Jason Barone

I’m confused as to what you’re trying to achieve. I’d be really interested to know what you’re trying to do and helping you solve it, if that’s the reason you left the platform. Can you email me at jason@jasonbarone.com?

Amechi

I’m a WordPress guy but that is because I know how to use it and like the functionality that it provides. That being said, I recommend Squarespace to people regularly so people don’t waste time spinning tires on favorite themes and optimizing layout when they don’t even have a voice, product, or targeted crew to serve. My opinion is that either choice is fine. It’s just a preference thing.

I LOVE that you played “Dimitri!” I felt like I wanted to ask a real question as well… otherwise it would have seemed like a crank call and almost disrespectful. Glad it was well received. I hope that I did not make you guys lose the Russian contingency. No offense was intended! Everyone please feel free to do a parody of my midwestern accent to make it even. :)

Chase Reeves

Yiour bliog questiouns are veery profiound.

http://livetheneweconomy.com/ Mike

I use Squarespace 5 for my main site and WordPress for my niche sites, mainly because it would be too difficult to make changes at this point. I miss the plethora of easy-to-use plugins that cater to WordPress, but love the simplicity with Squarespace, especially now that I’ve got my site pieced together mostly to my liking.

http://squarespaceguru.com Squarespace Guru

I’ve set up tons of Squarespace ecommerce sites, and those products are ranking fabulously! Each product you setup has unique meta data generated from the product information you enter. Even if SS didn’t apply unique meta data to each product, your Google juice isn’t going down the drain based off that one data point. There are literally hundreds of other variables impacting search rankings for ecommerce items.

http://squarespaceguru.com Squarespace Guru

Nope, not true at all. Nearly all websites today are built using a “templated” platform. WordPress is a templated platform, Joomla is…Drupal is… It’s all about the content you build into those templates that matter. And then once the content is in the site, what signals indicate that people care about the content.

Squarespace SEO is actually really great. Rand Fishkin founder of MOZ praises SS SEO and even provided tips when version 6 was being built!

I’ve found SS to be easier to rank than WordPress for many reasons.

If you can point to any articles that talk about SS SEO…let me know, I would love to check ‘em out! :)

As you suggested we have already sold a bootstrapped manual version of our product to a few folks and gained some solid insights that has helped our focus.

Today I made the first few code commits to our MVP product. We were already headed in the direction but you answer has certainly help our confidence. In a few weeks we will be asking the community for feedback on what we have created. Cheers!

http://www.makingusmile.net/ Mr MakingUsmile

I have tried a few frameworks. WordPress seemed to be the easiest to use. The wordpress community appears to be the biggest. I’m going to continue to scan your site. I like what I see so far!

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The Sparkline — a blog for independent creatives and entrepreneurs building matterful things.

The Sparkline is the blog of Fizzle: honest training + vital community for people who want to build their thing and support themselves. It’s for creatives, makers, artists, hackers, bloggers and internetters willing to dig in and care about the what and why of independent business.